


If Only in My Dreams

by HarkerX



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: AU, Car Trouble, Christmas Eve, Coffee, Fluff, M/M, Romance, Wilderness, mysterious diner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 13:05:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17121917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarkerX/pseuds/HarkerX
Summary: this is some fluffy, smoopy, romantical, snowy sap :D





	If Only in My Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LoveHonorCookie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveHonorCookie/gifts).



 

The underneath, the undercarriage, clanks once and then once again. Snowflakes land on the windshield, smeared by the thwump-thwump of too-old wipers, their blades cracked. A bit of rubber waving in the breeze.

A flag of surrender.

Orange warning flashes on the dash, the twisted turn of slippery wheels, the fishtailing.

He was driving east.

Now west.

Now, the sudden impossible jolt of the car careening over the shoulder, nose pointed down, two trees too large and the snow

falls.

Wet. Impossibly wet and Will brushes a lock of too-long hair from his eyes as the car sputters and stops.

“Shit,” he grunts with a tight hand on the steering wheel but it won’t help. The Volvo is old, rusted in spots and creaking. Creaks like an old rocker, all split wood but in this case it’s just that the trip from Baltimore to Wolf Trap seems to get longer and lonelier, and the road too wild, the snow too deep.

He opens the door with the push of his elbow, trudges out into the white, into the cold, biting wind. Pulls his toque down, scarf up. His coat is old and the zipper’s stuck down at the middle of his chest and of course it is.

He thinks about death.

Every moment of every day is blood-clouded, but he rarely thinks about dying.

Except when he looks up and sees the black night, the twinkling stars. North Star.It’s too far to walk home but there’s nothing out here but the dark, the vast empty nothing.

Soon, the howling won’t just be the wind.

Will tugs his phone from his pocket. Checks the GPS even though he knows where he is but maybe it’s just to make sure the phone does too. He opens the map.

Clicks nearby.

There is nothing nearby. But then there’s a dot. A single blue dot. He wipes his thumb over the glass.

He drove farther. Drove longer. He knows the blue dot. A derelict short-stack of a building, used to be a diner and he turns around, looks up again. Taps the phone. The bent-legged human icon.

Nine minutes.

The old rundown diner that he should have passed thirty minutes ago and below the map it says:

**OPEN until 2am.**

Will tugs up his collar, pulls his toque down over his ears and his eyebrows and tugs his gloves from his pocket.

He follows the blue dot.

***

Nine minutes turn into eleven, into twenty. Into thirty five and by the time he sees the glow, the shimmering plate glass, it’s a mirage. Might as well be. His eyelashes are frozen shut, sticking to his cheeks and so much snot on the cuff of his jacket it might as well —

it’s so gross.

Inside the heavy weight of his boots his toes are half-frozen and he thinks about that, about frostbite and amputation and what he could achieve with the knife he keeps in his pocket. How he should have sharpened it.

The neon sign flickers champagne pale.

**Welcome.**

Even if he isn’t, he’s going inside.

***

What he expected was some rehash of what the diner used to be, a side-of the road formica dive, all edged chrome and chipped countertops. A carafe of coffee, black handle cracked and maybe, just maybe it was fresh hours ago, but now it’s just dark, black sludge.

He’d drink it, all of it.

What he gets instead is a fireplace. Warm wood, an old record player and a scratched, tinny rendition of _I’ll Be Home for Christmas_.

A man and a broom, an apron tied around his waist. Perfectly pressed and his shoes. Diner shoes are rubber-soled and squeak when you walk but this guy?

This guy, with his too-strong forearms and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his perfectly pressed apron and his dress shoes.

Maybe Will hit his head when his car spun out and this is some weird concussive experience.

There’s snot on the sleeve of his coat and he fumbles with the button and rolls it up, covering the worst of his mess. The last time he was here was with Katz, maybe ten years ago. He’s passed it how many times since if he takes the secondary route and every time…

Every time it’s been rot-wood and garbage.

“You have been here before, ” the man says, his silvered-blond hair is tinsel and his smile is only half-formed but somehow it’s still warm.

“Yeah,” Will says and the man leans the broom against the bar. “But it was—”

“Different.”

“M’yeah.” Will slides his toque from his hair, pats down the damp curls. “Broken.”

“And now fixed.”

Shit, his car.How hell is he going to get back to his car? “Do you have coffee?”

“Please,” the man says as he points to a soft leather chair. The song skips and the man crosses the room to lift the needle as if starting the record over but then…

 

_Christmas Eve you will find me_

_Where the lovelight gleams_

 

Will doesn’t sit. Instead he fiddles with the tab on his zipper. There’s no carafe, no heating element, no old, lime-scale kettle. There’s an espresso maker, polished chrome and deep rosewood, a row of wide-mouthed latte bowls, glaze and paint worn, as if too many hands have held them.

“Sugar?” 

Will nods. Walks to the fire. Snow blankets the base of the windows, the glass fogs. Icicles have started to form, becoming winter-glass branches, the limbs of temporary trees. 

“I’m Will,” he calls out, over his shoulder. 

“Hannibal,” comes the reply.

Hannibal. “Could your war elephants get me back to my car?”

“I suppose,” Hannibal answers. “If one asks nicely, anything is possible.”

“So, pretty please, then?” In a smile, wide enough that he means it. Wide enough that the other man, that _Hannibal_ shakes his head even as he chuckles and lifts a bowl. 

Carefully. 

Reverently.

“I really thought this place was abandoned.” Broken. Now fixed.

“I restored it,” Hannibal says, tilting the bowl in his hand. Steam rises from the strange machine, softening the air between them. “The night gets too dark.” 

The dark has always drawn him in. “So you’re a beacon?”

“I have been many things.” 

“You can add saviour to the list,” Will chuckles. “I probably would have frozen to death out there.” 

“I might recommend candles and a blanket next time.”

Winter fucking safety. “Recommend a new car instead.”

Hannibal presses down on a lever, a steel arm and there’s the familiar sigh of milk frothing. “Is someone expecting you?“ 

“Huh?”

“It is Christmas Eve.”

Oh. Is anyone expecting him. Hannibal probably means people. Will almost says _No, Never_ , but that's a bit depressing even for him. Technically there are seven someones, one named Buster. A Winston. “Not exactly.”

Hannibal hums, pours dark syrup into the bowl and covers it with milk. He turns the bowl, waits a moment and then lifts the small silver jug with its pointed lip high, high, high and the stream of milk is a ribbon.

He brings it to Will, there by the window, and in the foam there is no heart, or swan, or leaf, but the impossible night and so many shining stars.

“You made me a constellation.” 

“We use the stars to guide us home.”

Will takes a sip of the coffee. Nutty and dark and the warmth of it flows through his body and he pulls the bowl closer, pressing it to his chest. He is quiet, even as Hannibal comes to stand beside him. Closer than strangers do.

Snow falls, tumbles over itself. Will knows exactly where he is, and it is the middle of nowhere and this place, this place with this man should not exist, who is a stranger and yet…

and yet.

Familiar. 

Will takes another slow sip of his coffee. “And you?” He tries to imagine this peculiar man, surrounded by children and presents, eating cookies for breakfast and serving turkey to so many smiling faces. “Do you have somewhere you need to be?”

“I am already there,” Hannibal says. 

And Will…

Will leans gently to the left and the stranger, this man who is a stranger and is somehow not unfamiliar at all, presses the smallest of kisses to his hair. And Will..

Will blinks in surprise and then gently drags his thumb along the lip of his mug. He says nothing, and together they look out into the dark, into the softly falling snow.

And, as if the snowflakes might also be falling stars, Will makes a silent, hopeful wish. 


End file.
